When William Clay Ford Jr. took over day-to-day control of Ford Motor Co. almost a year ago, the automaker was losing money. As chairman and now chief executive officer, Ford directed the creation of a plan to cut $9 billion a year in costs by mid-decade.

Now, he says, the company is making good progress. In a wide-ranging discussion, Ford talks about that, and more.

Your first year as CEO. Take an adjective to describe it.

Tough.

Tougher than you thought?

No. I knew it was going to be tough. ... I'm very encouraged with how it's gone, but it has been tough.

What one thing ... has been most frustrating?

The fact that we can't seem to get our story told, which is why we're going out on the road. There is a lot of misinformation about Ford out there. And if you look at what we were looking at at the beginning of the year: We had cost issues, quality issues; we had market share issues; we had the viability of Mercury; we had relationship issues with our employees, our dealers and our suppliers.

I feel very, very good about what we've done on each of those fronts this year, and matter of fact, I am sort of taking them sequentially:

Cost issue: While we said overall costs would rise this year, and they will because of all the new products coming, still we've managed to take $2 billion of cost out. We're going more aggressively after cost now. I've just challenged the troops to go after more nonproduct cost. And costs are coming out and we're on the trajectory we laid out to get material cost out.

Quality: We improved 12 percent in the J.D. Power [study] and our internal tracking studies are showing that is holding up and that our quality improvement is accelerating and our warranty costs are coming down.

Market share: We stabilized the market share, and in fact it has been growing really throughout the year. August was our best month, and September was a better month than that. ...

So are we where we need to be? No, obviously not. Are we headed in the right direction, all the major measurables? Yes, I believe we are. But we haven't really told our story yet, and the reason we haven't is I wanted to have three solid quarters behind us before we went out and really started talking about what we were doing. ...

Let's talk about the misinformation. What's the most aggravating?

In every one of those fronts there is misinformation and the totality is that people say Ford is not making progress, Ford's not going fast enough.

Not cutting costs fast enough? That's the big one that everyone is upset about.

We are going much more aggressively after nonproduct cost. I've gone back with the team within the last month and said we got to go harder. ...

What kind of nonproduct costs?

Everything. We have a significant portion of our cost base in nonproduct. If you think of everything that this company spends money on that is nonproduct related, it's a lot. ... It's everything from the cost of owning and managing buildings, to travel to incentive programs, all your overhead costs.

Has there been a particular toughest decision?

The people part is always the hardest for me because to me the Ford Motor Co. is our people. I love this company, and the people who work here are like part of the family. When you believe that, any time you have to take an action that affects them negatively, you hate it.

What will you spend more time doing in year two as CEO?

I think it's more important for me to be more visible externally. And I don't mean the ads. I think the ads are something very different. I think part of it is I wanted, you'd better make sure your house is in order before you start to be visible. I think while we are not where we need to go yet, by any means, we are headed in the right direction.

Next year is our centennial. ... The best way to celebrate the centennial isn't a party or an event or even a product; it's success. The best way for this company to have a big celebration is to be successful next year.